First-year Education students from HCT-Al Ain Women’s campus (AAW) got to put their classroom theory into action, when they received a group of bright-eyed visitors to the campus.

Twenty-six children, and their teachers, from the Um Ghafa Kindergarten visited the college and participated in Math Day activities in the AAW Learning Hub on Monday, October 8, 2018.

As a part of one of their Education courses, in which they are learning about the effective teaching of math lessons, the AAW students planned, created materials for and taught six interactive math activities.

In groups of three, the AAW Education students taught the children in groups of 5 or 6, with the range of hands-on activities including:

Red or Blue, or Green

The curriculum required children to sort objects according to common properties, and the children were asked to sort toy dinosaurs according to their size. They then used visual art to make a mosaic of different colors. In a second activity, the children listened to the story ‘How do dinosaurs go to school?’ They then sorted different dinosaurs into categories of good behavior and bad behavior, depending on how they acted in the story.

Long or Short

The Education students acted out a play about long and short objects. Then the children had to sort the dinosaur tails according to whether they were long or short. Another group of children had to compare and describe the length of two objects. So, they created two dinosaurs using playdough – one must have a long neck and the other must have a short neck.

More or Less, or The Same

Children had to learn to recognize when there were more or less or the same number of objects. So, the children went on a hunt for dinosaur eggs. When they had found some, they had to compare who had the most, who has less and who had the same amounts.

Sozan Saaed, AAW Education lecturer, commented that: “The Math Day provided an excellent opportunity for student teachers to practise teaching early childhood math; to develop their empathy with students; understand why using creative activities is so necessary for this age group, and to try skills they will need in school in a very supportive environment.”